Tuesday, July 9, 2013

I went over the edge!

You may remember a few weeks ago, I posted about raising funds for the Central Texas Make A Wish foundation? And that if I could reach my fund raising goal of $1500 that I would be rappelling/abseiling down the side of a 32 story building here in Austin?

Well thanks to the generous support of family and friends, I met my $1500 goal! I was able to be part of a group that helped Make a Wish raise over $324,000 dollars to spay for amazing wish experiences for kids suffering from terminal illness. 100% of the proceeds will be going directly towards funding wishes for these kids (often the last great experience some of these kids get to have) and I'm so touched at the support, words of encouragement and financial support I received.

If you look closely at the picture above, you can see a tiny little me coming down the side about 1/2 way down the left side of the building? I'm not gonna lie. It was pretty scary! Especially taking that first step over the edge.

So you're all harnessed in and you step over the safety railing and just sit back into the harness until it takes your weight. I definitely felt a teensy bit insane... That's why the safety railing is there, right!? I kept asking the safety guy "So I let go of the railing now? Now? Are you really sure? Super duper sure?" At least I made everyone on the roof laugh. :)

Oh, and I decided to wear a tutu. It made the kids smile.

You can tell how tightly I'm holding on but that's what sheer glee looks like. :)

Between the adrenaline and the physical effort, it was a bit of a work out. In order to go down you have to squeeze on the brake to let it up and then you just use your feet to sort of bounce/walk down the side of the building. I had visions of being all Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible and very smoothly descending....Not so much. :) I did ok most of the way but ended up getting spun around somehow and couldn't stop giggling. I think that was also about the time I heard my friends on the street below hollering my name (love those people so much) and that got me back on track. It took me just shy of 7 minutes to make it down the 32 stories. The fastest person was 1 minute 3 seconds (zoom!) and the slowest was 21 minutes. Nearly 200 went over the edge over a 2 day event.

Tutu, coming over!

And she's off!

Feeling very Tom Cruise...

And then not so much!

Still spinning! And laughing really hard.

HUGE smile all the way down!

Wahooo!!! I did it!!

Back on terra firma. A glass of champagne and a little curtsy.

Feeling pretty proud of myself!

Part of my cheering squad

Big hug and kiss to all of you for all of your support!

Photos courtesy of my friend Brian Gray (unless stamped with the MAW logo and those are courtesy of the MAW foundation)